The principles of design dictate that simplicity of operation is often of the highest importance. This principle is often overlooked within the arena of automotive design. Features within automobiles must often provide a variety of features and function from safety, to comfort, to convenience. Additionally, automotive features must often be flexible enough to provide for numerous operational uses of the vehicle. This may include the ability to alternate between passengers and storage or even a varying number of passengers. As a result, safety features such as seat belts and head restraints are commonly arranged for maximum passenger capacity. Often, however, such maximum passenger capacity is not realized and these features remain un-utilized.
Under utilized features can represent a loss in efficiency in design. This loss in efficiency, however, is commonly an acceptable trade-off for the increased flexibility of use these features bring. It is highly desirable for such features to present minimal impact on the overall functionality of the vehicle when not in use. Such is the case with headrest assemblies. Head restraint assemblies provide valuable comfort and safety features for passengers. As such, they are often implemented in automotive rear seat assemblies. These rear seat assemblies, especially center seating, are often un-utilized. The head restraints in these cases fail to provide any passenger benefit, and yet may remain positioned in between the driver's mirror and portions of the rear window. Thus, the head restraints, when not in use, impact design efficiency.
It would be highly desirable to have a head restraint assembly that could be adjusted, when not in use, to minimize its profile within the rear window. It would furthermore be highly desirable to have such an adjustable head restraint assembly be tied in to other features within the automobile that indicate whether the head restraint assembly is being utilized or not. In this fashion, the head restraint assembly could be moved automatically between a stored and deployed position without complex driver operated controls. Additionally, under the principles of design simplicity it would also be highly desirable to have such an assembly operate under simplistic mechanical operations utilizing existing design structures.